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News Surrounding Windows Phone 8.1 Leaks

As Windows Phone users are looking forward to the updates in their software, on Monday, news surrounding the upcoming Windows Phone 8.1 release came out to the cheers of Windows Phone users. The software now includes two major changes that will please many Windows Phone users.

The addition of a notification center and an almost Siri-like assistant is much like Android’s Google Now and iPhone’s Siri, but will give Windows Phone users amazing new ways to enjoy their phones. The updates are scheduled for April during the Build conference according to sources.

Notifications For Windows Phone

The first surprising feature to be added to Windows Phone 8.1 is the addition of the notifications feature. In beta versions of the release currently, settings are exposed as they are swept from the top, and is expected to be in the main release as Microsoft has gotten a lot of good feedback from its beta testers on it.

The addition of a notifications center is available on competing phones, and will be a welcome thing for Windows Phone users. The software will allow for users to do a long swipe and see a full notification history for all of their applications installed on their Windows Phones. This should even out the notification battle in the phone world.

Digital Assistant and Other Features

The other main feature of Windows Phone 8.1 is the addition of a personal assistant. It is aimed to replace Bing Search and allow users to use their voice or text to find what they need. Meeting reminders, location features, and other inclusions will give Windows Phones the same functionality of Google Now on Android and Siri on Apple currently.

Other features added of late include separate volume controls, Bing Smart Search Results, VPN support for enterprise users, music and video updates, and more. It is possible that Microsoft will also be shipping separate versions of Xbox Music and Xbox Video for Windows 8.1 and should make it better than before. Social updates with Twitter & Facebook will also be updated.

I use Windows Phone 8, and look forward to Windows Phone 8.1. I love that Microsoft is adapting its software quickly, and giving users what they want quickly.

Written by:Dave Amodt Dave is our news reporter, he reports on everything Microsoft, including MSFT (stock news), related Windows news as well as most hardware news.Dave runs his own content production company and publishes new content every weekday on our site. If you want to stay up to date on everything Microsoft, make sure to subscribe to Dave. He's also on Google+